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IBM announces 160Gbps optical networking chip

IBM is touting a CMOS-based optical transceiver chipset that can transmit data …

IBM has announced a prototype optical transceiver chipset that can transmit data over optical fiber at speeds of up to 160Gbps. IBM informs us that it's fast enough to transmit "a typical high-definition movie" per second. (Will "typical high-definition movie" replace "Library of Congress" as the SI-approved unit for "a whole lot of data"? Only time will tell.) 160Gbps is over ten times the 13.271 Gbps speed of backbone-class OC-256 fiber.

The main transceiver chip is implemented in a regular CMOS process, and it comes out to about 17mm2 and consumes only 2.5 watts of power. The chip is then packaged together with some other components made of indium phosphide and gallium arsenide to make the complete transceiver device.

IBM's optical announcement sounds very similar to an optical-related announcement from Intel in September of last year. Intel also talked up a hybrid CMOS-based optical transceiver device, with part of the device built in indium phosphide and packaged together with a more conventional CMOS chip containing other components.

The idea behind both of these products is that they point the way toward an eventual replacement of the regular copper-based bus-level interconnect for desktops with much faster, lower-power optical technologies. Currently, the cost and size of the lasers used in optical transmission make fiber optics infeasible for the kinds of short distances that one finds inside a server rack, or within a single server box.

When we see the first commercial hybrid CMOS optical devices from Intel and IBM, they'll probably be used for high-speed networking in the datacenter. In particular, the market for high-performance clusters would love a low-power, low-cost networking technology with such high transfer rates. From there, the technology will migrate onto the motherboard and provide an eventual foundation for future frontside buses and the like.

I recently spoke with Intel about their 80-core Terascale research prototype (more on that when the article goes up this week), and it was clear from that talk that Intel will be making some interconnect-related announcements in the coming year. Furthermore, all signs point to those announcements centering around the same kind of optics technologies that the company has talked up previously and that IBM is touting today.